Ven­ti­la­tion is usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with com­plex instal­la­tion of air ducts, which stops most peo­ple who want to use it at home. How­ev­er, quite sim­ple and con­ve­nient ven­ti­la­tion sys­tems with flex­i­ble air ducts have recent­ly appeared that you can assem­ble your­self.

It is known that a per­son needs oxy­gen pro­duced by green plants as a result of pho­to­syn­the­sis. If the air con­tains a suf­fi­cient amount of it, and the con­cen­tra­tion of oth­er gaseous sub­stances does not exceed the norm, then such air is called “fresh”.

In addi­tion to gas­es and water vapor, fil­a­men­tous, dusty and oth­er par­ti­cles are in sus­pen­sion in the air, and some of them are harm­ful to human health. Their max­i­mum per­mis­si­ble con­cen­tra­tion (MAC), mea­sured in mil­ligrams per 1m³ air is strict­ly lim­it­ed, and if it does not exceed the norm, then the air is also called “clean”.

The fresh­ness and puri­ty of atmos­pher­ic air are main­tained by nature itself due to the con­stant mix­ing of air mass­es, which is dif­fi­cult in a con­fined space (for exam­ple, in a room), which forces a per­son to inter­vene in this process.

Each of us exhales an aver­age of 23liters of car­bon diox­ide per hour. Know­ing its con­tent in atmos­pher­ic air (0.3 l/m³) and allow­able val­ue in the room (1 l/m³), it can be cal­cu­lat­ed that in order to main­tain fresh air, the air exchange rate (inper per­son) must be at least 33m³/h It is easy to pro­vide through nat­ur­al or arti­fi­cial ven­ti­la­tion.

Dur­ing the con­struc­tion of any res­i­den­tial build­ing, gen­er­al ven­ti­la­tion is pro­vid­ed, usu­al­ly lim­it­ed to nat­ur­al exhaust. In this case, the exhaust air is removed from the room through a com­mon ver­ti­cal chan­nel, and instead of it, due to the pres­sure dif­fer­ence, atmos­pher­ic “flows” through win­dows and doors. Ordi­nary win­dows are breath­able, even when closed, due to gaps and gaps in the frames, which is not the case with mod­ern frames with high­ly sealed dou­ble-glazed win­dows, which great­ly reduce air­flow. If the apart­ment is stuffy or con­den­sa­tion forms on the win­dow panes- this is a sign that ven­ti­la­tion is not doing its job and oth­er ways should be sought.

One of them- “own” ven­ti­la­tion in the apart­ment. “Own” nat­ur­al ven­ti­la­tion is sim­ple and cheap- it is enough to open a win­dow or a win­dow, but few peo­ple are sat­is­fied with the envi­ron­men­tal costs of a mod­ern city. More effec­tive “own” forced (arti­fi­cial) ven­ti­la­tion- Withit can be used to move the required amount of air at the desired speed. The fil­ter installed at the inlet blocks the path of large par­ti­cles of pol­lu­tion, the min­i­mum size of which depends on the fil­ter mate­r­i­al, pre­vents the pen­e­tra­tion of pre­cip­i­ta­tion and all kinds of insects. If you install a silencer, you can increase the sound insu­la­tion in 1.5–2 times. Pol­lut­ed air is removed from the room using “own” forced exhaust ven­ti­la­tion, which leads to a decrease in pres­sure in the room and the sup­ply of fresh atmos­pher­ic air.

This unit has max­i­mum per­for­mance 350 m³/h and con­sumes no more than 0.06 kWh, which is enough for an apart­ment up to 120m². Length of con­nect­ed air ducts with a diam­e­ter of 80mm should not exceed 18m. Two speeds of rota­tion of the engine allow you to change its per­for­mance. ATThe unit has six branch pipes for con­nec­tion with air ducts: five inlets on the front pan­el and one on the side for exhaust air removal. When con­nect­ed to the mains, it is not nec­es­sary to ground the motor frame. The noise from the fan oper­at­ing in nor­mal mode does not exceed the lev­el of 35db. Block dimen­sions- 275275275mm.

Inlet con­nec­tions on the front pan­el for con­nect­ing air ducts

BUT. Lid cov­er­ing an unused branch pipe
B. Cen­tral spig­ot diam­e­ter 125mm is used to con­nect to a kitchen hood. It is equipped with a non-return valve that pre­vents the spread of odors from the kitchen through­out the apart­ment.
AT. Branch pipe with a diam­e­ter of 80mm, which can be con­nect­ed by an air duct to an anemo­stat installed in one of the rooms (the entire sec­tion of the hole is used)

G. Spig­ot with valve and lim­iter for auto­mat­ic main­te­nance of a con­stant air exchange rate 15 m³/h in the bath­room

D. A spig­ot with a valve for auto­mat­ic air flow con­trol lim­its the flow of cold air into the bath­room up to 30 m³/h

Every­thing seems to be sim­ple and clear, but the device of such “own” ven­ti­la­tion usu­al­ly requires addi­tion­al instal­la­tion of sta­tion­ary air ducts. Andonly the advent of flex­i­ble ducts great­ly sim­pli­fied the prob­lem. Sep­a­rate mod­ules: fans (cen­trifu­gal, axi­al or com­bined type), silencers, air fil­ters, exhaust and sup­ply dampers, split­ters- Withusing flex­i­ble ducts and fas­ten­ers, it can be eas­i­ly com­bined into a ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem. Such well-known com­pa­nies as Ger­man MAICO, Swedish-Swiss ABB, French AERECO, Swedish OSTBERG, Ger­man EBM, Bel­gian RENSON pro­duce such sys­tems. Their instal­la­tion is sim­ple, but not always avail­able with­out spe­cial­ist advice.

Let’s talk about the instal­la­tion of one of these sys­tems, which we chose because, in our opin­ion, you can do it your­self. The sequence of instal­la­tion of the ABB Statvent ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem with forced exhaust and nat­ur­al air inflow is demon­strat­ed by the spe­cial­ists of CJSC “ENGINEERING OBORUDOVANIE”. It is installed inthree-room apart­ment of a pan­el house series P‑44M (total area 76.4m², room area 19.9; 14.1 and 11.1m²kitchen and cor­ri­dor 13.2 eachm²bath­room 3.9m²bath­room1.0m²).

This sys­tem pro­vides a sin­gle air exchange in a two- and three-room apart­ment. From rooms where excess heat, mois­ture, odors are emit­ted (kitchen, bath­room, bath­room, pantry), exhaust air is tak­en through exhaust valves (anemostats), which are con­nect­ed via air ducts to a cen­trifu­gal type exhaust fan unit. He also car­ries out the process of remov­ing the “exhaust” air. Air flows from all rooms are com­bined in the fan unit and are dis­charged through the exhaust duct into the ver­ti­cal duct of the gen­er­al ven­ti­la­tion of the entire build­ing or through the out­er grille direct­ly to the street. The pow­er of the fan used lim­its the num­ber of anemostats (notmore5) and the length of the air ducts.

Atmos­pher­ic air enters the apart­ment through the sup­ply valve, which is mount­ed in the win­dow or wall of the build­ing. The diam­e­ter of the sup­ply valve of the Kiv mod­el can be 100 or 125mm, and the max­i­mum length up to1000mm.

Drill a hole in the wall for the inlet valve with a hole drill of the appro­pri­ate diam­e­ter.

Install the intake valve body.

Insert the rock wool muf­fler sup­plied with the valve.

Install the diaphragm unit with a reg­u­la­tor and a fil­ter (the open­ing angle of the diaphragm can be changed smooth­ly using a knob or cord). Then repeat the steps for installing the sup­ply valves in the remain­ing rooms.

Remove the top pan­el of the fan unit, then remove the impeller (“impeller”) with the motor and fix the back wall of the unit at a dis­tance of no more than 500 mm from the ver­ti­cal chan­nel of gen­er­al ven­ti­la­tion.

Install the impeller with the motor in place and close the unit with the top pan­el.

Install a met­al tip on the out­let air duct and lead it into the ver­ti­cal chan­nel of gen­er­al ven­ti­la­tion, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly drilled a hole with a diam­e­ter of 128 mm in the chan­nel wall.

Care­ful­ly fill the gap between the tip and the hole with mount­ing foam to pre­vent air “suck­ing”.

The inlet area of ​​this valve, and hence the air exchange, is man­u­al­ly adjust­ed using a two-blad­ed diaphragm. It can be opened and closed by turn­ing the han­dle or using a spe­cial reg­u­la­tor with a cord. Fresh air enters the faster, the greater the dif­fer­ence in air pres­sure out­side and inside the room. So, at a pres­sure dif­fer­ence of 30Pa and the max­i­mum open aper­ture ensures the air sup­ply rate up to 50 m³/h Purifi­ca­tion of the incom­ing air is car­ried out using a fil­ter installed in the diaphragm unit.

Such a valve does not change the tem­per­a­ture and humid­i­ty of the sup­ply air, which is no dif­fer­ent from a con­ven­tion­al win­dow. These room air para­me­ters can be slight­ly changed only by select­ing the diaphragm open­ing angle (for exam­ple, in win­ter by a small angle, and in sum­mer- the oppo­site is true). In order for fresh air to enter all the premis­es of the apart­ment, sev­er­al sup­ply valves are installed- usu­al­ly one per room. In order to allow air to flow from rooms with con­stant human pres­ence to rooms from where it is forced out, it is nec­es­sary to pro­vide open­ings in the par­ti­tions with an area of ​​about 180cm². This can be a gap in the low­er part of the door, cov­ered with a dec­o­ra­tive frame, or a gap 20 cm high.mm between the low­er plane of the door leaf and the floor. Rec­tan­gu­lar holes 50 can be used for the same pur­pose.350mm with bars in the inte­ri­or par­ti­tions.

The sys­tem project for the apart­ment in ques­tion has the fol­low­ing fea­tures:

The exhaust fan unit is installed with noz­zles towards the kitchen on the mez­za­nine 300mm from the ver­ti­cal chan­nel of gen­er­al ven­ti­la­tion. The kitchen, bath­room and toi­let were cho­sen as the place for instal­la­tion of three anemostats. ATkitchen hood is made from two places. The cen­tral con­nec­tion of the unit is con­nect­ed to an exhaust hood above the stove, which was pur­chased with­out its own fan. There must be a grease trap (sev­er­al lay­ers of fine met­al mesh) in front of the umbrel­la fil­ter to pro­tect the valve of the cen­tral pipe and espe­cial­ly the engine. Forced exhaust from the kitchen is car­ried out through one of the noz­zles with­out a lim­iter.

The air ducts in the bath­room are locat­ed above the false ceil­ing, in the cen­ter of which an anemo­stat is mount­ed, and in the bath­room the anemo­stat is locat­ed in the par­ti­tion on the side of the bath­room. The unused branch pipe is closed with a lid. Length of air ducts with a diam­e­ter of 80mm was 4.6m, diam­e­ter 125mm (toexhaust hood in the kitchen)- 2.2m, which does not exceed the allow­able length. The air duct from the exhaust hood is sewn up with a dry­wall box, which is cov­ered, like the walls of the kitchen, with liq­uid wall­pa­per.

Air exchange with min­i­mal stag­na­tion zones through­out the apart­ment is pro­vid­ed by four sup­ply valves installed in each room and kitchen.

To pre­vent sag­ging of the duct, attach it with brack­ets to the ceil­ing.

Make a hole with a diam­e­ter of 85 mm in the upper part of the bath­room par­ti­tion, pass the air duct through it into the bath­room and cut it with a mar­gin of 5–10 cm in length with a sharp knife.

Insert the mount­ing sleeve into the air duct and fix it in the par­ti­tion wall.

Install an anemo­stat at the end of the duct.

Pro­vide a gap of about 20 mm at the bot­tom of each door to cre­ate nat­ur­al ven­ti­la­tion.

Sheathe the air duct in the kitchen with dec­o­ra­tive pan­els, such as gyp­sum board 10 mm thick, and fin­ish them in accor­dance with the tex­ture of the wall.

Make a door in the fan assem­bly guard to allow the front pan­el of the fan assem­bly and the impeller with the motor to be removed.

This is what the intake grille looks like from the out­side.

• Source: Ideas for Your Home Magazine#25